Legal challenge to gay marriage ban in churches

Back in May I wrote about gay marriage and warned that the EU Court of Human Rights would rule that churches refusing to conduct gay marriages is a breach of human rights.

The matter hasn't made it to the EU Court of Human Rights yet but a gay couple have just announced their intention to take the Church of England to court for the right to get married in church.  Their argument is that their choice of venue for their wedding is more important than the religious beliefs of a few million Christians and that the law should be changed.

It upsets me because I want it so much – a big lavish ceremony, the whole works, I just don’t think it is going to happen straight away.

As much as people are saying this is a good thing I am still not getting what I want.

As I said back in May, I'm neither gay nor religious so I really don't have a vested interest either way but I do think it's wrong to force churches to conduct same sex marriages if it's against their religious beliefs.  This legal challenge will almost certainly fail because the Church of England isn't refusing to conduct a gay marriage of its own volition but because the law bans them from doing so but it will undoubtedly be used to request a judicial review of the law banning gay marriages in church and that will eventually end up in the EU Court of Human Rights.

As a party, UKIP warned that this would happen and lawyers and even MPs warned that it would happen too.  Cameron knew what the consequences were but continued down this divisive and dangerous route where a foreign court will decide whether the right of a gay couple to get married in church is more important than the rights of members of the church who believe it is a sin.  Either way, one group of people is going to be denied their "rights" as defined in the EU Convention on Human Rights and a lot of lawyers will get very rich bringing legal cases on this for decades to come.